Tux
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Posts posted by Tux
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2 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
I'm thinking maybe those cages are more against mortars and drone dropped munitions hitting the top of the turret. Maybe even against artillery shells coming down at a steep angle.
In previous wars, the risk of a direct hit were small, but with modern artillery response times and accuracy, you can hit individual tanks even without guided shells.
Yes ok, you may be right, although as far as I remember when they first appeared last Spring they were very much ‘justified’ in the context of the Javelin threat. I think it was before attack drones became a significant factor.
Either way I’m not sure the case for the efficacy of the original examples was very convincing.
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44 minutes ago, Butschi said:
Things get difficult when both worlds mix, which is in a way what is going on here.
I agree but it can only be the reader’s responsibility to identify and be clear about which type of post they are responding to.
Quote…it is never wrong to challenge a theory. On the contrary it is absolutely necessary.
Again agreed but the key word here is “challenge”, as opposed to just ‘doubt’. You challenge by discussing weaknesses in the theory or by building a good case for an alternative. Simply expressing doubt might feel healthy but is not helpful and can be insulting to the person who has worked hard to establish a case.
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2 hours ago, panzermartin said:
For the record, the commissar comment wasn't for anyone else but Grigb exclusively for his strict suggestion to Butschi to stop supporting his "friend" his "lie" and his bold points with phrases like "end of story", meaning he had absolutely the last word.
I'm sorry I have been annoying and contrarian, it's not from a caprice but out of my desire for "justice" and "balance". I would do the same in a pro russian forum, I think one of the most dangerous things in society is being collectively in agreement or sometimes fixation to a certain point, even when there is not enough evidence to prove us 100% right. And how could that be, given the fog of war and the propaganda from both sides?
I've been here since the Iraq war and I had some familiar experiences. There was a trigger happy board full of testosterone and we know what happened. God knows how many personal attacks I received. In the real world, WMDs were never found, half a million of people died, Middle East is still a mess, refugees are getting drown in the Mediterranean as we speak... and US was led to discredit and isolation, and that even might have played a role in the rise of Trump, the current mess In Ukraine etc...
I feel our Europe is in deep trouble with this war, and constantly undermining Russia is a dangerous habit I won't support here, but point taken I will try to be more constructive in the future.
I think the conflict in this thread might have arisen because there's a difference between politely reminding everyone that we don't know enough to be 100% certain and telling people that their conclusions are "copium" because of that fact.
"Copium" is a potent cocktail that leads to conclusions based largely on (very) selective reasoning, hope and a deep aversion to a particular alternative. Copium is some structural steel bars welded over the top of your T-72 because 'Ukraine have Javelins; Javelins attack from above; I just can't bear the thought of how horribly vulnerable to Javelin attack I am in my tank; Steel is hard and can be used as armour; QED'. Copium is "Intelligent Design".
The majority of the useful opinions and positions expressed on this thread are not copium-fuelled. They are properly and more-or-less rationally built upon a firm base of relevant professional experience and critical analysis of both available data and historic trends. That does not (and cannot) lead to a 'certain' conclusion but it can (and does) lead to a 'most likely' conclusion. Implicit in the work done to establish such a 'most likely' conclusion should be an understanding of where the weaknesses in the assessment lie and it is welcomed when people politely remind everyone what those weaknesses are. That is partly because it demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of the work done by the person who carried out the assessment in question. It is even more welcome when someone steps in and offers an equally or even more well-founded alternative assessment and conclusion, especially if it challenges the previous 'most likely' case. That's because it adds to the conversation and can be educational and important to think about.
So while I would agree that 'group-think' can be dangerous that doesn't mean it should be challenged for the sake of it; it should be challenged based on the merits of the position that is being 'group-thunk'. One's confidence in a position/the imperative to challenge it should always be proportional/inversely proportional to the strength of the case made for it. That leads to the fact that the position itself should actually be irrelevant when deciding whether it needs to be challenged. If you really are concerned by the fact that positions in this thread are "constantly undermining Russia", rather than that they are poorly-constructed, then you are the one letting your aversion to that "habit" drive your thinking. You are the one getting too close to the copium fumes.
Finally, if being collectively in agreement in the absence of 100% proof is one of the most dangerous things in society then we are all doomed, since there is no such thing as 100% proof. I would argue that it is actually disagreement with the collective simply due to a lack of 100% proof which is far more dangerous, since it leads to indecisiveness and passivity in the face of important challenges. See the climate change "debate". See any number of the "debates" that spilt all over the place in 2020-21. See the crippling paralysis that struck the collective West when definitely-not-100%-proven-to-be-Russian "Little Green Men" appeared in Crimea in 2014.
Forget 100% proof. Search for 'most likely'. Understand why it is considered 'most likely'. If you agree, cherish collective agreement. If you disagree, then explain why and you will be thanked for it.
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So many pages of bickering between people who seem to fundamentally agree with each other:
1. Russia’s continuous and deliberate assault upon Ukrainian civilians is a militarily counterproductive war crime.
2. If Ukraine deliberately targeted civilians with their recent attacks on Moscow (which we all think and hope they probably didn’t) that would also be a militarily counterproductive war crime. That’s true regardless of how morally justified some may think it would be.
3. Very recently we’ve seen some evidence that the Ukrainian strikes may have been a careful message designed to puncture the Muscovite sense of invulnerability and widen any cracks that may exist between Russian socio-economic groups. The drones may even have been deliberately unarmed or otherwise designed to ensure minimal risk of accidental civilian deaths. All the better and a clever move, if so.
I agree that oil tanks, mobile phone networks, internet infrastructure and other visible/impactful targets might be more productive in the medium/long term, though. -
7 hours ago, JonS said:
Curiously, by 1944 the RAF was far more accurate by night than the USAAF was by day.
Is that so? I don’t remember reading that. Was it ‘just’ OBOE pathfinders and H2S that enabled that or am I forgetting something else?
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5 minutes ago, Vacillator said:
Agreed, most drops were nowhere near that accurate.
I seem to remember the USAAF judged air raid accuracy by what proportion of bombs fell within 1,000ft of the target and I think, by this measure, average accuracy was 20-30%.
And the USAAF was bombing under more favourable conditions than almost anyone else.
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2 minutes ago, DesertFox said:
Some De Havilland Mosquito Mk VI crews might want to disagree with your statement.
As much respect as I have for Pickard and the rest of the Amiens crews they were still aiming for something not much smaller than a football stadium…
The most impressive part of that raid was the piloting skill required to carry out such a low-level attack at all. Flying so low down the poplar-lined avenue approaching the prison that they had to hold one wing higher than the other to avoid the tree-tops!
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17 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
Training certainly helps. There is certainly no doubt that my accuracy would have been better if I put as many hours into flight sims as I have into Combat Mission. But from what I've read and heard (and I think either Military History Visualized or Military Aviation History made a video on bomber accuracy in WW2) my experience in the flights sims gave me more or less the right impression. And that impression was that, in an era before PGMs, bombing is something you do to areas, not to specific points. When a WW2 bomber was described as accurate, that probably meant that it could reliably get its bombs to land inside a football stadium, not that it could snipe tanks.
I think this is the answer and I think being able to reliably put your bomb load into a football stadium would have made you one of the most accurate bombers of the war.
A small part of my impression is also based on a fair amount of sim experience. And bear in mind most wartime pilots never got half as much practise as today’s casual sim pilot, nor were they able to leave by instantly and reliably judging the results of their attacks with external camera views, live kill feeds and what-not.
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8 hours ago, billbindc said:
b and c are simply two sides of the same coin.
My fault for rushing the post and not being clear enough. B was supposed to suggest the messaging is being controlled by Putin, perhaps as further positioning for the upcoming how-have-we-lost-Bakhmut-so-soon blame game. C is just Prigozhin yapping because Prigozhin yaps.
In any case maybe time will tell.
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10 hours ago, sburke said:
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private military contractor Wagner claimed Thursday that his forces have started pulling out of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine and handing over control to the Russian military, days after he said Wagner troops had captured the ruined city.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a convicted criminal and Wagner’s millionaire owner with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in a video published on Telegram that the handover would be completed by June 1. Russia's Defense Ministry didn't confirm this and it wasn't possible independently to verify whether Wagner’s pullout from the bombed-out city has begun after a nine-month battle that killed tens of thousands of people. Prigozhin said his troops would now rest in camps, repair equipment and await further orders.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said Thursday that regular Russian troops had replaced Wagner units in the suburbs but that Wagner fighters remained inside the city. Ukrainian forces maintain a foothold in the southwestern outskirts, she said.
This strikes me as giving a depressingly literal new definition to the idea of a “hospital pass”.
However is the most interesting thing about this how loudly they’re telling us all about it? Exhausted frontline units are routinely rotated out of the line; is all the fuss about this particular instance:
a) to set up a trap (or give the impression of doing so to encourage UA caution and thus buy time to complete the operation)?
b) to prepare the ground for scapegoating the Russian Army/ reinforcing Wagner’s reputation once they inevitably (perhaps even in Putin/Prigozhin’s mind) lose Bakhmut to the UA?
c) just more Russian noises from a noisy Russian trying to stay front and centre of things in the minds of his fellow Russians?
I think my money’s on the most mundane (c) but b looks interesting, too.
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1 hour ago, sburke said:
Well the Russians who raided Belgorod this week aren't trolling, at least some of them really are fascists.
Looking for a non-fascist Russian element on either side might be a difficult reach. Not like there is a strong democracy movement there.
on the Ukrainian side there clearly has been some far right involvement however I think the UA has made a concerted effort to rein that in even if it is mainly to make sure folks know who actually is giving orders and organization to the fight. Haiduk has provided us a history throughout these pages of who is who and what is really going on as the narrative is not simplistic.
Hell Germany has had issues as well.
Germany far right: Elite KSK commando force 'to be partially disbanded' - BBC News
No argument from me, mate. Point well made.
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10 minutes ago, sburke said:
I understand that, however considering how much of that we see here, why would we expect the UA to be totally without any aspect? it is an unrealistic expectation that then feeds a narrative and an unfair standard.
I’m not sure we are. People on this thread are probably more comfortable than most in accepting the kind of nuanced reality that you’re pointing out. However that hasn’t been the narrative so far: the story has been that Wehrmacht markings on AFVs are ‘ironic jokes’ intended to mock the Russians’ labelling them as Nazis.
If you’re right and this is just Ukraine’s due complement of fascists that we’re seeing (every nation has them) then that’s fine but needs to be managed to make sure their influence isn’t blown out of proportion in the minds of more ‘casual’ western viewers (so far it doesn’t seem to be moving the dial so that’s encouraging). It’s the ‘ironic joke’ option I think people are warning against and pointing out is potentially and needlessly counterproductive.
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12 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Prigozhin is talking about revolution, the preponderant power of the Ukrainian state, confirming that tens of thousands of casualties, etc. And he is quite specifically pointing at Russian elites being the cause. There may be an argument that this sort of talk helps Putin on some level but I have yet to see it.
As others have noted, my best guess would also be that he is using his/Wagner’s cache among working Russians to start framing a scapegoat for the war: the entitled elites. ‘They have betrayed Putin and they have betrayed Russia’.
If it’s to be assumed he is still speaking at Putin’s behest.
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1 hour ago, kevinkin said:
Thanks. Didn't know that.
Let's see if this unit actually forms and is anyway effective.
“Jagdverband 23”?
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1 hour ago, Fenris said:
Btw... Ahh, what exactly is a SuperCum?
Mate… you haven’t lived!
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1 minute ago, billbindc said:
It's clear Prigozhin doesn't control his own logistics and he depends for his survival on the favor of one VV Putin. As long as those facts pertain, Prigozhin is a pawn who thinks he's a bishop.
Indeed, or if he’s a bit more self-aware he’s clearly spouting off to try and sound more ‘bishop-like’. It’s a very public threat, though, so the demand for ammunition isn’t the whole message. My guess is it’s just standard Russian posturing and arse-covering but I’m sure he/Wagner could theoretically make quite the unseemly nuisance of themselves with whatever ammunition stocks they do currently have, even if they don’t have enough to continue the grind in Bakhmut.
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
This guy has not been pushed out a window so clearly he has got the power to get away with this. Historically guys like this take their toys and roll on the capital (happening in Sudan as we speak - and Russia is in that game as well). That might just be what it takes for a Russian collapse of course we are then in a Russian civil war which is always fun.
Do you think that’s the subtext to this message which may hit Shoigu, Gerasimov et al harder than the overt threat? Is it less about where Wagner will be withdrawn from on the 10th (easily blamed on Prigozhin if Ukraine benefit) and more about where Wagner might arrive on the 12th?
I wonder how far away we are from that kind of thing.
[Edit:] Dammit, I should have said “are we there, yet?”…
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18 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
In nine months, the Germans have a cute little tank called the Lynx.
Let’s hope it has its mother’s turret.
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Does anyone know whether there’s a reliable, up-to-date indication available somewhere of the contributions made to Ukraine by various nations (numbers, $value, etc.)? I seem to remember a couple of useful graphs earlier in the thread which gave us some interesting titbits (France and Germany doing more than they get the credit for being the ones I remember most).
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1 hour ago, Yet said:
also it is 'the netherlands' and 'czech republic', not 'netherlands' and 'czechia'.
I think the Czech government does prefer “Czechia”, so I wouldn’t rely on that particular example.
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18 minutes ago, Seminole said:
Step 1 - stop foreign military interventions.
Step 2 - no longer caught up in eternal responses to the unanticipated response to the earlier intervention (e.g. don't move military into Saudi Arabia to defend their dictator from the neighboring dictator, thus don't antagonize an entirely separate group of jihadists bent on ending that apostate intervention, the response to which begets another intervention, this time to 'fix' Afghanistan, and on and on until we have troops in Syria to partition that country while we pile more troops back into Somalia to 'fix' it too, and on and on...) the U.S. gets to know some peace.
Step 3 - there is no 'world peace', never has been. But that isn't the same as us choosing to become a party to various and sundry conflicts around the globe. As one of those old, dead guys noted: "[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right."
It sounds like your main complaint is with how complicated the wider world is. I can empathise. We’d all love there to be more easy answers. Unfortunately (and with due apologies to clergymen and Jordan Peterson) old dead guy quotes aren’t a valid substitute for rational thought and analysis of the world as it seems to be.
“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
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Ok, deep breaths. I said:
Quoteno war has ever started because anyone joined NATO.
You quoted that and then responded with:
1 hour ago, Seminole said:Council of Foreign Relations website, January 20, 2022:
Tensions between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have reached the point of crisis. The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening a wider military incursion into Ukraine unless the U.S.-led alliance makes several major security concessions, including a commitment to cease expanding eastward.
Nobody even debated this idea the whole time it was posed until after February 22nd, 2022. It was conventional wisdom.
...a statement about the fact that Vladimir Putin threatened war unless NATO promised not to let anyone else from Eastern Europe join the alliance. I know you understand the difference between what someone threatens to do and what has actually ever happened so I will assume the quote was a mistake and you didn't actually intend to counter my point.
In which case:
- What "idea"? Putin threatened to start a war unless NATO refused to accept additional members from Eastern Europe. Gotcha. Are you expecting that people might have debated whether or not he said that? What people certainly did debate is whether or not he was being disingenuous by implying that he wouldn't (further) invade Ukraine if NATO conceded and guaranteed no further alliance members east of... some point. We now know for a fact that he was, indeed, being thoroughly disingenuous.
- I think the phrase "conventional wisdom" is doing a lot of legwork, here. We have multiple examples of Eastern European countries actually joining NATO without it causing a war. We have zero examples of any country causing a war by joining NATO. How can it possibly therefore have been "conventional wisdom" that war would be an inevitable consequence if NATO "expanded" any further?
QuoteHere's a little piece from PBS, Feb 22, 2022:
For the Kremlin, the notion that Ukraine, a pillar of the Soviet Union with strong historic ties to Russia, would join NATO was a red line. “No Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia,” Putin warned U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns, who is now director of the CIA, in the weeks leading up to NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit.
I don't understand how people act like this understanding never existed before.
Again this doesn't address my point but, again giving you the benefit of the doubt, do you mean the "understanding" that Russia would consider Ukraine joining NATO a "hostile act"? Well, again, that is what they were quoted as saying. Is that where your thought process stops? Or is your point perhaps that whether what Russia said was true or false; right or wrong; justifiable or an actual criminal threat; the correct course of action should have been to take them at their word and avoid 'seeking out war' by denying further additions to NATO?
What if Ukraine threatened to invade Russia unless we let them in to NATO? Apparently absent our ability to assess and act upon the truth, morality or legality of what they said we would have been in quite the pickle, wouldn't we? Blimey, you're right: perhaps we should just stick to smiling benevolently at the world from our ivory towers while everyone else works things out for us.
Oh, no! But... what if someone threatens to invade us unless Ukraine lets Russia join NATO?! Ukraine isn't even supposed to get a vote on NATO accessions! How do we avoid war now?! Oh, if only there was something else we could do upon hearing such a threat that could help us avoid such hopelessly ludicrous situations!
QuoteYou're leaving out some things, but I'm not sure how much the mods tolerate discussion in this vein.
I just reject the revisionist idea, advanced by proponents of incorporating Ukraine in NATO, that no one expected Russia would react as they have to that prospect.
*Sigh*. Ok, it's past time for me to read with my daughter before bed and I need to come up with a voice for Smaug tonight so that'll take some warming up. Quickly, then: what did I leave out? There's no need to hide behind uncertainty about how permissible discussions in "this vein" (seriously, please try to be more specific with your responses) might be. I will take the rap for you if it comes to that.
I don't recall anyone saying that "no one expected" Russias reaction. What people are saying (and please try to stick to that) is:
- It was wrong to expect Russia to start a war if Ukraine joined NATO, since such threats had been demonstrated to be empty multiple times in the past.
- Regardless of that whether someone expected Russia to start a war if Ukraine joined NATO or not is totally irrelevant because Ukraine did not join NATO!
QuoteGermany and France sure as hell expected it, and The_Capt acknowledged it by mentioning 'cheap gas' in lieu of the underlying reason for cheap gas: peace.
If Germany and France didn't expect trying to add Ukraine to NATO would provoke this war, what was their actual concern? Because I haven't seen reference to any other, at any point.
I don't care what their actual concern was. I mean, I'm pretty certain it wasn't just the distant prospect that Russia's public position (contradictory of actual historical fact though it may have been) might be a truthful one because I believe their decisions were probably made independently by at least one three-dimensional human being. But in a conversation about actual reality (which I am desperately trying to keep this to) it is not relevant. If they thought that opposing Ukraine's joining NATO would prevent war, they were wrong. If they thought that supporting a Ukrainian application for NATO membership would cause a war, history suggests they were wrong but we will never know.
Ukraine did not join NATO.
Russia invaded Ukraine. Again.
I am happy to try and continue this conversation if I am missing your point (and if Steve is feeling ultra tolerant) because I do think it kind of impinges on the Russian mindset behind their current actions but please, if you do respond to me, be specific (fewer 'ideas', 'understandings' and 'veins') and please steer clear of dragging in arguments made using premises or inferences which have already been demonstrated to be false. It would help me out a great deal.
Right, without making any snarky comments about how I've had my fill of fantasy for one evening, it's time for the Hobbit.
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11 minutes ago, Seminole said:
You already agreed that Germany and France opposed Ukraine's NATO ascension because they accurately perceived the risk of war it generated. There wasn't any other reason. You lambasted them for wanting 'cheap gas', but ignore that they accurately recognized the threat to their 'cheap gas' was provoking a war.
Can I just check the logic here, because I don’t think I’m understanding you: no war has ever started because anyone joined NATO. However Ukraine *in fact* didn’t join NATO and *in fact* was subsequently subjected to a war of aggression. So surely the French/German perception was wholly inaccurate? What did they prevent by opposing Ukrainian membership of NATO?
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2 hours ago, chrisl said:
I think the western armor remains a distraction. The shaping is already going on with the destruction of RA high value targets, particularly things like AD/CB radar and EW equipment. They're slowly blinding the RA further and making sure that UA remote operators will have free operating areas.
Yep, exactly my point: always a good idea to look in the opposite direction to the topic that seems to shine brightest in these situations.
Where are the Ukrainian Ardennes?
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Yes, point taken. Again as far as I remember that was the blanket assumption on Telegram and elsewhere at the time. Not sure what else they could have been intended to defend against at that point: PGMs had been around for years, drones weren’t yet a major threat. Javelins were Ukraine’s new toy at the time.
Anyway, I’m as reluctant as the next man to clutter the thread while an actual offensive is underway, so I’ll step back at this point.